The Motivational Bases of Attitudes Toward Animals

Adelma M. Hills
Edith Cowan University,Australia

The need for a theoretical grounding of the human-animal relationship is addressed from the perspective of the motivational bases of attitudes toward animals. Building on recent developments in attitude theory, and integrating themes from the historical and cultural background to Western attitudes, a model is developed that proposes three fundamental motivational bases, where responses to animals depend on instrumental self interest, empathy/identification, or people's beliefs and values about the nature and status of animals. Initial empirical studies using the model revealed reduced instrumentality, heightened empathy, and strong commitment to a value perspective endorsing equal status for humans and animals among animal rights supporters. Farmers exhibited an opposite pattern, and supported the dominant status of humans. The urban public evidenced moderate levels of instrumentality and empathy, and a neutral value position with some individuals exhibiting considerable ambivalence (agreeing with both equality and dominance). Gender differences on instrumentality (favoring males) and empathy (favoring females), were less evident for values, and were confined to female and male farmers. Directions for future research are discussed, as is the practical value of this approach.

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Personality Differences between Pro- and Anti-vivisectionists

John Broida, Leanne Tingley, Robert Kimball and Joseph Miele
University of Southern Maine, New England
Antivivisection Society, East StroudsBurg University

We examined the possibility that opinions on the animal rights debate reflect differences in personality. Our survey of 1055 college students compared scores on the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory and other personality measures with scores on the Animal Research Survey. We found people supportive of animal experimentation more likely to be male, masculine, conservative and less empathic than those opposed to it. Animal rights advocates were more likely to support vegetarianism and to be more ecologically concerned. They also indicated less faith in science. Students likely to encounter animal experimentation in their studies (psychology, biology majors) tended to oppose animal experimentation more than others. Intuitive and feeling types were more opposed to animal experimentation than were sensate and thinking types. Extraverted-sensate and extraverted-thinking types were more likely to favor animal experimentation than were extraverted-intuitive and extraverted-feeling types. Implications of these results are discussed.


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Corpulent Cattle and Milk Machines: Nature, Art and the Ideal Type

Michael S. Quinn
York University, Canada

The concept of a "breed" of domestic cattle is predominantly a social construct. The late eighteenth century development of intensive selective (in)breeding of livestock produced breeds that were visually distinguishable from each other. The adoption of breed standards was facilitated in part through paintings and drawings of idealized animals. These "ideal types" or "standards of perfection" further served as targets for breeders who attempted to achieve the artist's conception of the perfect animal. However, concepts of perfection change with fashion and thus ideal types constitute moving targets.


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The Moral and Conceptual Universe of Cockfighters: Symbolism and Rationalization

Fred Hawley
Louisiana State University

Cockfighting is an ancient sport that has deep roots in rural parts of the world and in certain areas of the United States. It also has great symbolic significance to its practitioners and aficionados as an affirmation of masculine identity in a increasingly complex and diverse era. Although the activity is illegal in most jurisdictions, it continues, generally in a covert setting. Because cockfighting is subject to criminal sanction and informal social disapproval, cockfighters have developed rationalizations which they use among themselves and offer to outsiders. These rationalizations are complex; some are overtly religious in nature. Cockfighters do more than merely talk about their pastime ­ they actively engage in formal and informal lobbying to keep criminal penalties for their activity at a low level of severity. As the nation continues to urbanize, these lobbying efforts, while effective in the past, are gradually losing legislative support. For a number of reasons, the pastime is losing respectability and adherents and will probably be criminalized nationwide before the end of the century.


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Game Killing and Killing Games:
An Anthropologist Looking at Hunting in a Modern Society

Heidi Dahles
Tilburg University, The Netherlands

In modern urbanized and densely populated societies ­ such as the contemporary Netherlands, which forms the geographical setting of the present analysis ­ hunting has lost its meaning as a mode of subsistence to become a symbolic strategy. Hunting is a cultural enclave in which the boundaries between humans and animals are blurred and the relations of dominance and submission symbolically reversed. Hunting challenges the legitimacy of apparently "given" power relations between humans and animals. Hunters construct, reproduce and legitimize hunting by crossing the boundaries between humans and animals. Hunting "for pleasure" is regarded as truly pleasurable only if it allows a reversal of the asymmetrical power relations between humans and animals, attributing almost human characteristerics to the game-species. In their cognitive schemes hunters measure their power and abilities with strong, cunning and preferably male opponents. Game-species share an ambivalent status between the human and the animal realms, the tame and the wild, and between their instrumental and expressive significance. Hunting "for pleasure" is justified by this very ambivalence.
 

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